Suppliers such as manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and individuals typically maintain an inventory of products to sell to consumers. Suppliers that regularly maintain or distribute large quantities of one or more types of products negotiate agreements with carriers to facilitate sales to traditionally less sophisticated consumers such as small businesses and individuals. The carriers, such as the United States Postal Service (USPS), United Parcel Service (UPS), Federal Express (FedEx), DHL Airways (DHL), and the like, facilitate the transactions by transporting the product from the supplier's storage facility, or pickup location, to the consumer, or drop-off location. However, the number of carriers, shipping methods offered by the carriers, and costs involved with effective management or administration of the carriers, each having a complex set of rules and rates, makes it economically infeasible for the suppliers to offer a wide variety of carriers and shipping methods. Further, various suppliers realize costs to manage overlapping groups of carriers and distribute the costs by limiting delivery of their respective products to the carriers and shipping methods they selected.
The advent of the Internet and other wide area networks (WANs) provides even individual consumers with sophistication in regards to carriers and shipping methods. For instance, the consumer can locate and access product costs for different suppliers and carrier costs for different carriers with little effort and time with respect to older methods such as calling by telephone or browsing catalogs. As a result, consumers find themselves disadvantaged by the limited shipping options offered by suppliers. In particular, one supplier of a product may offer the product at a lower price than a second supplier but the difference in the overall cost to the consumer for purchasing the product and paying for shipping depends on the shipping options available from the suppliers.
Some current WAN systems attempt to reduce carrier management costs incurred by suppliers by selecting flat shipping rates for products and using a single carrier to transport the product from the supplier to the consumer but these systems simply force some consumers to supplement shipping costs of other consumers. Other WAN systems, such as the systems described in United States patent application 20020032612 and in United States patent application 20020032573, both published Mar. 14, 2002, attempt to address the limited number of shipping options by facilitating management of larger numbers of carriers. These systems, however, increase the complexity of management of the carriers by increasing, for instance, accounting efforts to pay carriers and distribute costs associated with management of the carriers, negotiation efforts to maintain the best rates for carrier accounts for internal and external consumers, and training efforts to train personnel to follow guidelines associated with the rules, rates, and carrier-compliant shipping labels of each carrier.